Millions of Americans Rush to Sign Up For New Health Coverage

Everywhere you turn lately you can hear about new opportunities for health coverage under the health care law, sometimes called Obamacare. And, it turns out, people are listening.

Yesterday marked the official launch of the new Health Insurance Marketplaces. People who are uninsured or purchase coverage on the individual market have new options for high quality, affordable health insurance on the Marketplace. The Marketplace allows people to comparison shop to find the plan that best meets their needs and budget.

On the first day for health insurance enrollment, both the federal Marketplace and state-based Marketplaces experienced large amounts of online traffic. Here are just a few examples of yesterday’s high numbers:

• Yesterday afternoon, the White House reported over 2.8 million online visitors to the federal Marketplace at Healthcare.gov.
• In the first three hours of operation in Colorado, there were over 34,500 visitors to Connect for Health Colorado, the state-based Marketplace.

These numbers will continue to climb as Americans seek information about their new health care options. And, many consumers have already begun enrolling in new, affordable health insurance plans available on the Marketplaces. For example, Kentucky’s Kynect Marketplace reported processing over 1,000 applications for insurance by 9:30am yesterday.

This was all on the first day of open enrollment – most Americans still have six months left to sign up for coverage. Because website volume was so high yesterday, some website visitors encountered problems or glitches with the websites. Luckily, there is still ample time to sort out these problems and ensure that health coverage is in place as early as January 1, 2014.

For the next six months, consumers and advocates still need opportunities to educate themselves about the new health insurance choices. Although millions of people have already visited the online Marketplaces, many more need insurance but don’t know how the law affects them. In order to provide easy to understand, accurate information, we put together resources outlining what the health care law means for women.

Yesterday was just the beginning. These numbers show that Americans are eager to sign up for high-quality, affordable health insurance.